Setting up an external preview monitor?

matthew180 · Post by **matthew180** » Tue Jan 03, 2006 7:00 pm

Greetings,

I have a monitor (C 1084S) that I'd like to use as an external preview monitor. Is it possible to be able to see how the final video will look during editing? I'm thinking this is going to be a little more complicated than just a tv-out from a video card (which I have, and it really didn't work since I have a composite input only on my monitor. Not to mention the resolution was all wrong for NTSC, as was the refresh.)

It seems to me I need a device that will output a composite interlaced video signal, just like what a VCR or DVD would put out? Are there such devices for use in an x86 PC and will MSP support it?

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Matthew

tyamada · Post by **tyamada** » Tue Jan 03, 2006 7:49 pm

If you use a computer video card to view video on any display device your color temperature will be all wrong.

You will not get a true preview of what you will get when the video is played back on a Television.

Terry Stetler · Post by **Terry Stetler** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 2:05 am

Commodore 1084S, right? That was internally either a Philips CM8833 or Magnavox 8CM515 (depending on when it was made) and is a great little video preview monitor. I actually have 2 Comodore monitors still in use in my studio and their image quality is still outstanding dispite their being ~15 years old.

Most display cards with TV-out can output both composite or S-video.

An image of your monitors I/O's would be very helpful as depending on when it was made the inputs differ, but that said;

Some 1084's came with a composite input, which makes things easy as all you need is a standard RCA to RCA video cable.

Using an S-video to a 1084's Y/C connections (labeled Chroma and Luma) requires an S-video to Y/C adapter cable;

http://www.svideo.com/svidbreakout1.html

The S-video would plug into the display cards S-video port and the RCA plugs on the other end would go into the 1084's Chroma and Luma inputs on the back.

If the adapters RCA connects are not labeled just plug both in turn into the 1084's Luma port and see which gives you a B&W image. Once you have that plug the other into the Chroma port. Voila'

The color temperature will be just fine and doing color corrections will be very acceptable in their correlation to what you'll see on a TV set.

First set up MSPro by entering the Preview Windows menu and selecting Playback Options. Here set the Instant Playback/Instant Playback to "dual head device". The same option can be set in the various effect dialogs by clicking the second little "tv" icon under the dialogs preview window and setting its Preview Playback Options to "dual head device" also.

Two of my systems have ATI video cards and all that's necessary is activating their Theater mode (see your cards manual).

Matrox's Parhelia, P-750, P-650 (all agp) and APVe (pci-e) cards provide an enhanced TV-out and are much favored among video editors for this and their multi-display capabilities. The Parhelia, P-750 and APVe can all handle 3 displays with one being capable of use as either a monitor or TV-out. Activating TV-out with these cards requires setting their drivers up for using PureVideo/DVDMAX.

Haven't installed an NVIDIA card on any of my systems, but have seen their TV-out and not been impressed.

maddrummer3301 · Post by **maddrummer3301** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 3:55 am

I also still have 2 of those monitors. Maybe 3, have to look in the attic.
They are very handy.
I think the oldest is dated about 1984 or maybe 1986.
I preview now on a bigger monitor.

MD

MSP maniac! · Post by **MSP maniac!** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 4:18 pm

It would be interesting to know what TV card you already have, it should work providing you have the right drivers.

What operating system are you using and you say it's an X86?.

If it's an older computer and operating system, it might not have the capability for dual display.